Review: Goodbye to Budapest by Margarita Morris

Goodbye to Budapest: A Novel of the Hungarian Uprising by Margarita Morris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this page-turner. It was written in the present tense, which took some getting used to, but made the action more intense.

Katalin’s father is arrested in Budapest by the Secret Police although he hasn’t done anything wrong. His time in prison shapes the family’s outlook against the regime as students start agitating for reform.

We know from history that the uprising in 1956 against Soviet control of Hungary was squashed, but Morris makes the atrocity more personal by showing us the wide variety of motivations of the dissidents, and the different outcomes for better or worse.

Katalin and those she loves are caught up in the horrors, but do they escape in the end? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

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